Eight Ways to Be Happy, According to Jesus, Part 2

Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer talks about the key to contentment. According to Jesus, happiness is not a set of circumstances.

It's the fruit of a right relationship with God. And the reason I say that is because most of us are in a culture where we think that our happiness is directly proportionate to our circumstances. Jesus said your happiness, if you're ever going to find it, is not going to be contingent on your happenings. Your happiness is going to be contingent on your relationship with God and living like me. Welcome to another day of teaching here on Summit Life with pastor and author J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Benovitch. OK, tell me if you've seen this lately. You may have noticed that even with all the comfort and luxury of modern life, happiness is still hard to come by. And all the self-care and positivity in the world can never truly satisfy our souls. So what does that tell us?

What are we missing? Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer explains how Jesus himself tackled that question in the Sermon on the Mount. He titled this message eight ways to be happy, according to Jesus.

And it's part of our series called The Whole Story. Let's join Pastor J.D. right now in Matthew, chapter five. The most famous sermon ever given called the Sermon on the Mount. We're going to look at the first 12 verses of it.

And the Sermon on the Mount. He's going to give us eight ways to be happy. You see, Matthew, chapter five opens up with a string of blessed are blessed are the poor in spirit and works through this list. The Greek word for blessed is the word Makarios, which comes from the word happy.

The Greek word for happy is Makar. Jews would use the term to describe a person in a state of salvation, someone who is experiencing the blessing and the favor of God in their lives. So these eight things are descriptions of a saved person's heart, a heart that is blessed by God, a heart that is filled by God, a happy heart. Chapter five, verse one, seeing then the crowds, he went up on the mountain.

When he was up there, when he sat down, his disciples came to him and he opened up his mouth. And he taught them, saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Poverty of spirit means that you embrace daily dependence on God for all that you need. You see, in Greek, there are two different terms for poor. The first term is what we typically think of as poor, monetarily poor. Those who struggle financially, those who can barely afford enough to eat, that would be your first term.

The second was one of my favorite Greek words, potokos. The word means someone who is so despised that they literally were spit on in society. This is the word that Jesus used for poor here. You see, God only fills empty hands. What keeps you from the righteousness of God is not your moral inability. What keeps you from the righteousness of God is your moral ability because that keeps you blinded to your need for grace. Blessed are the poor in spirit.

They're the ones that have the kingdom of God. Verse four, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Mourning clearly goes along with being poor in the spirit, right? When you feel powerless, weak, and unrighteous, you mourn. And so God says, I comfort you. But I also think, based on Jesus' future teaching, that mourning here means a willingness to enter the pain of others voluntarily and mourn with them even when you don't have to.

So here's how I'd write this one down. Mourning means being relationally connected to others. So blessed are those who open their hearts and their homes to take in the pain of others even when they don't need to. Blessed are those who mourn, who voluntarily step out of their community and enter into and mourn with the pain of another community. Not only will you be happier in this life that way, you will be eternally comforted, Jesus said. Verse five, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Now meekness means taking the second place instead of the first place whenever you can.

It means leveraging your power and your position to serve others and not yourself. I think here of the thing that Jesus did right before he died. In the moment leading up to his death, the last thing he does with his disciples is he gets down on his hands and knees and watches the dirtiest part of their body, their feet. Here he is, the Lord and the master of the universe about to go into the most heroic activity ever, ever done on earth. And what's the prelude to that?

Washing the disciples' feet. But see, Paul said, the apostle, because of that act of humility, God exalted him and God gave him the name that is above every name. What would your life look like, do you think, if consciously in every area of your life, whether with your resources, your position, your opportunities, you consciously took the second place instead of the first? You know what would happen?

Two things, one, you'd start to be insanely happy. Number two, you would find God himself got involved to begin to exalt you because that's what Jesus promises right there. Blessed are those, he says, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they're the ones that'll be satisfied. To hunger and thirst for righteousness means to crave fellowship with God above everything else. You see, Jesus understood, listen to this, our souls are hungry.

And the reason for that, King Solomon explained, is because God put eternity in our hearts. The way Blaise Pascal, other philosophers have said this, is God has created the human heart with a gigantic hole in it. And we spend all our lives trying to figure out what goes in that hole. And so we try money and we try the approval of others. We try romantic love, he said, none of it works because that hole is in the shape of God himself and it's the size of eternity.

Y'all imagine a bucket that was so big that all the water in the Atlantic Ocean, if you put it in that bucket, would not even cover the surface area of the bottom of the bucket. That bucket is your soul. You see, money and romantic love and whatever it is that you give your heart to will corrupt your spirit. Not only will you be unsatisfied, your soul will disintegrate. It is when you hunger and thirst for righteousness that not only will you be filled, you will overflow with happiness. Blessed are you when you thirst for God. Blessed, verse 7, are the merciful because they're the ones who are going to receive mercy. The merciful are those who extend forgiveness or generosity to the same measure it's been extended to them.

But watch what Jesus said there. Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy. What if God's mercy to you was directly proportionate to the mercy that you showed to your spouse? What if God's mercy to you was directly proportionate to the mercy you showed to your ex-spouse? What if God's mercy towards you was directly proportionate to the mercy you showed to your boss, your parents?

You fill in the blank. What if God's mercy to you was measured by those things because isn't that exactly what Jesus just said? Now, that verse used to cause me real problems.

You know why? Because it sounded to me like Jesus was saying that if you didn't forgive somebody the right way, he was going to throw you in hell. That's what it sounded like. And then I read one of Jesus' stories and it dawned on me and it all came together, okay? It's a story he told about one man who owed another man 10,000 talents. Now, I've told you in those days, 10,000 talents was like saying a bazillion dollars, the kind of debt you could never pay off in a 10,000 lifetimes. So the day comes for this debt to be repaid and the guy doesn't have it because it's a bazillion dollars.

And so he goes into the courtroom where the guy who loans him the money is and he falls on his face and says, I don't have money. Please don't throw me in prison. Give me one more week and I'll pay it back. Now, there are two things that are ridiculous about this. Number one, people who get into the position where they can loan other people bazillions of dollars do not get there by being a pushover or a softie, right?

Fair enough? Even today, we don't call them loan puppies or loan bunnies, loan gerbils. We call them loan sharks, right? Because if you don't pay the money back, they send some guy named Brutus to your doorstep with a baseball bat and he breaks your kneecaps.

So the idea that this guy is going to be like, oh, don't worry about it. So the second reason it's ridiculous is even if he has another week, he can't earn a bazillion dollars in a week. He can never pay this back. Well, everybody in the courtroom is feeling kind of awkward because this groveling man is there when all of a sudden Jesus' story takes an unexpected turn and this loan shark feels an emotion nobody expects him to feel and that emotion Jesus calls compassion. And his lips starts to quiver and he gets a tear in his eye and he says, no, no, you don't have another week to pay me back because you don't owe me any more money. I, as of right now, I resolve your entire debt. And everybody in the court, I mean, nobody can believe it.

At least of all this guy. This guy kind of, hey, are you serious? And he says, yes, I'm serious. As of right now, you don't owe me a dime. This guy stands up and for the first time in his life, the weight of the world is off his shoulders and he walks out of the courtroom kind of in a daze and there coming across the street is another guy in the community who owes him $3 for McDonald's or something the week before. And he says, hey, where's my $3? And the guy says, man, I'm sorry, I don't have your $3. It was, you know, I was like, man, I didn't get paid this week so I'll give it to you next week. You don't have my $3?

You're going to jail. And you know, when Jesus says this in the story, everybody kind of rolls their eyes and says, that's absurd because nobody that just got forgiven a bazillion dollars is going to refuse to forgive somebody else for free. And Jesus is like, exactly. Which means that if you don't forgive the people in your life, it means that you've probably never experienced the forgiveness of God.

Does that make sense? Blessed are the merciful because they're the ones who've experienced the mercy of God and have become merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart for they're the ones who'll see God. The pure in heart are those who keep their hearts free of the things that grieve God.

And what grieves God? Impurity, sin. You know, there are lots of reasons we might avoid sin but the most powerful one is we want to know God. And the bottom line is you cannot cherish sin and know God. You cannot have fellowship with God and enjoy and entertain yourself with the things that put His Son on the cross. So if that means you're one of the people that come in here this weekend and they're here every weekend, who are like, I really would like for God to be a part of my life but you've got things in your life that you know are displeasing to Him and that you just refuse to deal with, you can hang up knowing God.

Because you cannot come to God and say, yeah, I want to know you but I am going to keep in my life things that I know put Your Son on the cross and I just refuse to deal with that. And did you notice the way Jesus said it? Blessed are the pure in heart for they're the ones who'll see God. What it means is our ability to see and understand God is directly proportionate to how pure we keep our hearts.

Write this down. Purity brings clarity. Purity brings clarity. The reason we often can't see God or know His will has to do with how filled our heart is with sin. A lot of times we complain about how confusing God is. Oh, how hard it is to find His will.

Oh, I can't find His will, it's so hard. When the darkness is not really in God or His will, the darkness is in our hearts. Purity leads to clarity. The more your heart is free of idolatry and lust, the more you'll see what God sees, the more you'll value what God values, the more you'll love what God loves, the purer your heart, the greater your grasp on the will of God.

Blessed are the pure in heart, Jesus said, because they're the ones who want to know God bad enough that they keep their heart pure so that they can see Him and know Him and fellowship with Him. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they'll be called sons of God. Blessed are the peacemakers, they'll be called sons of God. Let's define a peacemaker as somebody who prioritizes relationship over personal vindication. You see, the reason I say that is because when you have conflict, you'll always have two sides. And in conflict, as a professional conflictor, I know that when you have conflict, you got two sides who both feel that they're in the right. And neither one of them can make peace because they feel like to make peace means they would have to surrender what they know to be right and they'll lose out and they'll end up wronged.

Right? Anybody with me on this? Am I the only one who gets in a conflict like this? Okay. A peacemaker is somebody who says, I'm not saying I'm wrong, but I know I value this relationship more than I value being vindicated as right. So let me try and see it your way. I'll explain to you my view, but I'm going to try even harder to understand your view than I am going to try to make you understand mine.

And where you can't see mine, where you don't see mine, I'm going to forgive you and I'm going to be patient with you because I value this relationship more than I value being vindicated as right. We've seen this played out right here in our church with some of the recent racial conflicts between our communities of color and the police. Both sides in this discussion that's going on in our culture have insights they believe need to be heard and do need to be heard. But both sides seem panicked that the other side is not hearing them. But then you have some from both sides in our church who say, I'm not saying that the side I'm typically associated with doesn't have a perspective that needs to be considered, but I also want to hear from and understand where you are coming from and I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and I want to know you and that means I'm going to grieve like you grieve and try to understand things from your perspective as much as I can.

Those are peacemakers. Because see, they're like Jesus. Jesus was clearly in the right, was he not? At the end of his life, he didn't say, you know what, I was wrong about the holiness thing, you guys are fine.

It's not what he did. At the end of Jesus' life, he still was right. He was right, but he didn't surrender his position, but he valued us.

So he prioritized the relationship even over personal vindication and went to a cross in shame so that he could win us back. And Jesus said, when you understand that, that's the way you're going to become. You're going to be a peacemaker because more than you care about being vindicated, you're going to want to love somebody, you're going to want to identify them, and you're going to want to make peace with them. You know, if there's ever been a time in our culture when we need peacemakers who understand this principle, it is now.

We need people who say, yes, let's talk and let's understand things from one another's perspective. Verse 10. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteous and sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of nasty things about you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. There's a lot of different things we could say here, but let me just summarize it with just this one statement. Blessed are those who value being right with God above everything else.

Blessed are those who value being right with God above everything else. You see, there comes a time in life when you're going to suffer. Maybe it'll be because of persecution.

Maybe it'll be because you get old and die. And that's a form of suffering, right? And Jesus said, you know what? You probably can't underestimate the value in that moment of being right with God and to know that you've used your life in the right way for the right things. Here's Jesus, Hebrews 12, 2. When he goes to the cross, he goes to his death in suffering and persecution.

Everything is taken from him. Yet Hebrews 12, 2 says he goes to that cross with joy. Joy in the midst of pain because he knew that even while his body was being torn apart by injustice, that his soul was right with God and that he was doing the things that God had put him on earth to do. Two general thoughts I want to conclude with. Number one, according to Jesus, happiness is not a set of circumstances.

It's the fruit of a right relationship with God. And the reason I say that is because most of us are in a culture where we think that our happiness is directly proportionate to our circumstances. And if you want to be happy, these circumstances got to change. You're single, you got to get married.

You're married poorly, you got to get married better. I mean, whatever you want to say. Even in our word happiness, we contain this. Our word happiness in English comes from the word happening. You are happy when what you want to happen happens. When your happenings are happening correctly, then you are happy.

Does that make sense? And when things are not happening correctly, you are unhappy. Jesus said your happiness, if you're ever going to find it, is not going to be contingent on your happenings. Your happiness is going to be contingent on your relationship with God and living like me. Happiness is not a result of a set of circumstances. It is the fruit of being rightly related to God. Number two, according to Jesus, happiness is a response to the gospel.

According to Jesus, happiness is only a response to the gospel. You see, one of the most important but overlooked details is where Jesus taught these things from. He went up to the mountain. When he got up to the mountain, he started to talk like he was giving a law. The way he worded things sounded eerily familiar because he started to say things like, you have heard Moses say, but I say to you. He is recreating the giving of the law. Another great religious teacher named Moses had gone up into Mount Sinai and there had given a law. Jesus is recreating that, giving a new version of the law, which leads me to the most common way people misconstrue these things. People look at these things like a list that you're supposed to work through to earn God's favor or salvation.

Like a ladder, you've got to climb to get to God. If you do these eight things good enough, then God will be happy with you and he will bless you, which is the most common way people will also misunderstand the original Ten Commandments. Here are ten things. Do these things.

Do them well enough. Eventually you will get a passing grade. If you get a passing grade, God will let you into heaven. But what people overlook, listen, is that when Moses gave the law to Israel, he gave it to them, listen to this, after God had saved them, not before. After they had been led out of slavery in Egypt, after they had been led to the Red Sea, he gave them these Ten Commandments. And the preface of the Ten Commandments is, because I'm the God who saved you, therefore you should don't kill, don't steal, have no other gods before me. In the same way, Jesus is giving us these eight things as a way not to earn salvation or blessing, but as a response to the God who has given us blessing and salvation.

So here's how you could read them. Because Jesus has saved us, we can be poor in spirit because we know he promises to be our sufficiency in all things. Because Jesus has saved us, we can enter into somebody else's pain the way he entered into ours. Because Jesus saved us, we can be meek and not try to take the first place because that's what Jesus did for us and God promised to exalt us the way he did Jesus. Because Jesus saved us, we can hunger and thirst for the God of righteousness because the God of righteousness has become our salvation. Because Jesus saved us, we can't help but be merciful to others the way he was merciful to us.

Because Jesus saved us, we want to be pure in heart because we want to know this God who saved us and we want to be righteous and pure like he is. Because he saved us, we can prioritize peace instead of vindication because that's what he did for us. Because he saved us, we can endure persecution because his resurrection shows us it's worth it. Our lawgiver was not a taskmaster who simply gave the law and then threatened punishments if we disobeyed. Our lawgiver was a savior who not only issued the law but then offered himself as a substitute sacrifice for those ways in which we had broken it. He didn't just ascend a mountain like Moses and give the law he ascended a cross to die in our place for breaking it. Which means if you look at these eight things like rungs of a ladder that you've got to climb to get to heaven you're going to end up in despair. You can never be these things enough in order to earn the blessing of God. These eight things are not rungs of a ladder that you climb to get to God.

They are a grateful response to a God who climbed down the ladder to come and save you. Somebody told C.S. Lewis one time, they were like, I hate the Sermon on the Mount.

C.S. Lewis said, I hate it too. I hate it like you hide in a sledgehammer that destroys my house. But unless that sledgehammer had destroyed the house of my own righteousness, I would have never learned to really trust in Jesus. And if I'd never learned to trust in Jesus, I would have never had this grateful response that gave me the desire to be merciful and pure in heart and to hunger and thirst for righteousness. You see that leads us to two very important questions. Number one, have you ever received Jesus personally as your savior? Because see that's where everything starts.

This is a gift. The core word of the gospel is substitution. Jesus lived the life that you were supposed to live. He did these eight things perfectly. And then he died the death that you were condemned to die for not doing these eight things.

And then he offered it to you as a gift if you would receive it. Have you ever received Jesus personally? Salvation is a gift that you have to receive.

And that leads me to the second question. Have you embarked from there on the life of discipleship? Because essentially the life of discipleship is characterized by these eight things.

Are you ready for these eight things to form the shape of your life? And if so, have you shown that through your first act of obedience, your first act of discipleship, baptism? You see, when we baptize you, we ask you two questions.

Question number one, we say in there in the tub with you. Question number one, do you believe that Jesus has done everything necessary to save you? In other words, are you poor in the spirit? Do you come into this place thinking that you're righteous enough to earn God's favor?

If so, you can't be baptized. But if you understand that you have no righteousness of your own, but Jesus has given you righteousness as a gift, then you can be baptized into his death and resurrection because he has become your salvation. If you answer that question, yes, I believe he's done everything necessary to save me. Then we ask you question number two, are you willing to go wherever he tells you to go and do whatever he tells you to do? Which means are you ready to put sin away to pursue Jesus and to make God the center and the focus of your life? Because Jesus has saved us, we can have true, lasting joy. Have you experienced this kind of joy? You're listening to Pastor J.D.

Greer on Summit Life. If you're ready to pursue Jesus and make him the center of your life, we have a unique resource this month to help you do that. It's a set of Books of the Bible cards. No matter what age you are, you'll enjoy this unique set of cards to help you make connections when you read the Bible. We hope you'll call today to get your set. But on our website, there are a lot more resources available to you as well.

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It's another message from our series called The Whole Story. Wednesday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.